Devil

From Conservapedia

"slanderer" in the sense of name-calling or "throwing" false accusations),

is the name given to the unseen personification of evil. By causing chaos, the devil leads people away from God, their Creator, and sometimes even to curse God. According to Wilhelm Busch, pastor who was persecuted by Nazis in Germany, it is totally impossible to understand the present state of the world if we have not accepted the fact that behind the scenes are the Devil and the powers of darkness.[1] Acknowledging that the Evil is an active power and educating new generations in this respect helps humans to distinguish between good and evil and live a life in harmony with Natural Law.[2]

Contents

Etymology

The word has its origins with the early Hebrews during the Exodus from Egypt. The local religions they encountered when they entered into Canaan included tales of the demon spirits (sa ir שעירים, "hairy ones" or "saytrs", Isaiah 13:21) of the desert, whose influence could be averted due to sacrifice. Despite being told to "...put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the LORD," (Joshua 24:14) many had accepted this superstition and sacrificed goats on the Canaanite and other altars. From this came the Herew word ha-satan שָׂטָן, the root word of "Satan".

Devil and Bible

In His parable, Jesus equates Devil to the thief who comes only to steal, kill and destroy[3], i.e. to disrupt the natural order of the World. Bible also records that first followers of Christ claimed to struggle not against flesh and blood, i.e. against created mankind, which mislead by Devil, often contributes to this disruption, but against these powers of darkness.[4] Bible further claims that a person can be delivered from the dominion of darkness, i.e. from life marked by disordered state, through faith in Christ causing an orderly life to be renewed again, referred to also as a life worthy of the Lord[5] in the kingdom of the Son.[6] Empirically, such experiences are reported by individuals including, for example, Michael Glatze or Jozef Demjan.

Devil and Lack of Time

Bush asserts that the powers of darkness work with a very precise goal in view. They keep us running - and that is why we never have time. Every imaginable device is used by the Devil to hinder us from finding time to think - for if we did we would discover that we can be delivered from his hold.[1]

Bush further muses that the Devil himself "believes in God" and certainly is no atheist: "The Devil is perfectly aware of the existence of God. Yet, for all that, he is not at peace with God."[1] Humanists in Slovakia, who present them self as being atheists and often show their Anti-Christian sentiment, surprisingly asked Jaroslav A. Polák, a self-described satanist and rationalist who worships pagan gods, to write an essay on the book The God Delusion by professor Dawkins.[7] In 2006, under the pretext of analysing "believing strange things", Michael Shermer, the founder of The Skeptics Society, presented on the so called 'TED event' the "hidden messages" that are supposedly there in reverse play of one musical record: "Oh, Here’s to my sweet satan, the one who’s little path would make me sad, whose power is satan". However, no information on discoverer of the alleged text was given.[8]

Devil and Humor

In his The Screwtape Letters (1942), C.S. Lewis quotes Thomas More who claimed that “The Devil, the proud spirit, cannot endure to be mocked…”[9]Martin Luther
wrote in his Tischreden (Table Talk) that “The best way to drive out the devil ... is to jeer and flout him ...”[10]

Other names for the devil

There are many pseudonyms used for the Devil, sometimes to clarify his nature and other times with the effect of obscuring his evil: